‘Russian Style. Vision of the 21st Century’: The Moscow Exhibition Halls Association welcomes guests to festival of creative experiments
The Moscow Exhibition Halls Association holds the ‘Russian Style. Vision of the 21st Century’ festival. The project will take place in several venues throughout the year. The festival’s main objective is to provide contemporary artists, designers, fashion designers, and musicians with an opportunity to reimagine and reinterpret the concept of Russian style.
The project’s supervisors selected the most prominent artists of past generations who have defined the development trajectory of Russian style in contemporary culture. The festival appeals to traditions not only to provide today’s creative minds with an opportunity to exercise their skills but also to facilitate the search for national identity in an ideological and philosophical sense.
While at the festival, Muscovites and guests of the capital will be able to visit several exhibitions.
‘Meyerhold’s Biomechanics. Actor. Puppet’
On February 22, the Na Shabolovke Gallery, in collaboration with the museum of the Obraztsov Puppet Theatre, launches the new exhibition ‘Meyerhold’s Biomechanics. Actor. Puppet’ dedicated to the phenomenon of Vsevolod Meyerhold’s biomechanics. The project commemorates the 150th anniversary of this innovative director.
The exhibition presents an artistic and research puppetry laboratory. Visitors will learn about how actors bring their characters to life on stage, what materials the puppets are made of, and about the history of puppetry. The production of theater puppets often proves to be a real artistic and technical breakthrough.
The exhibition will feature guided tours, lectures on Vsevolod Meyerhold and Sergei Obraztsov’s theatrical experiments, screenings of films and shows from the puppet theater Golden Fund, master classes, and meetings with actors.
‘Russian Style. Textile Stories’
The project will start on February 29 at the Nagornaya Gallery. Both beginner and well-established designers are participating in the exhibition.
For example, artist and designer Irina Yega prepared a series of works based on the paintings by the distinguished avant-garde creator, Wassily Kandinsky. The ‘Divitsa’ collection will treat the guests with prints based on unique museum samples of ancient Russian art, like headpieces and capital letters from handwritten books, fragments of goldwork, women’s jewelry, traditional embroidery, and painted spinning wheels. Irina Yega is a graduate of the Stroganov Moscow State Academy of Arts and Industry, a member of the Russia Designers Association, the International Association ‘Union of Designers,’ the International Art Fund, and a participant in Russian and international exhibitions.
Moscow designer Elena Dorogaya will demonstrate the results of her experiments with velvet. The fabric appeared in Russia in the mid-16th century and was one of the most common types of festive clothing fabrics for grand dukes and tsars. Even Domostroy mentions it; today it is integrating into a new artistic and historical context thanks to Elena’s artistic approach.
The exhibition will also feature works by Larisa Lukyanova, a member of the Creative Union of Artists of Russia, the Union of Artists of the Moscow Region, the International Association ‘Union of Designers’, and a participant in Russian and international exhibitions. She has mastered the unique original technique of textile collage and creates clothing collections based on the paintings of Russian avant-garde artists.
Visitors to the exhibition will also have the opportunity to admire the works by Vera Shcherbakova, a member of the Creative Union of Artists of Russia and the International Association of Artists (section of applied arts), a laureate of the All-Russian festivals of decorative art ‘Patchwork Mosaic of Russia.’ She has created over 120 three-dimensional patchwork pieces. Her largest patchwork creation is the three-dimensional composition ‘Miracle Island’ based on Pushkin’s ‘The Tale of Tsar Saltan.’ It is 2.4 meters high and 3 meters long.
The exhibition will run until March 31.
‘Ekaterina Smirnova. Lithography’
The project will run from April to May at the Kitai-Gorod Gallery. Ekaterina Smirnova mainly works with stone lithography but also uses other classical printing techniques, like etching, engraving, and woodcutting. Her art depicts city townscapes and important periods of Russian history. Ekaterina Smirnova created the Age of the Empress chromolithography series about Catherine the Great and the Chronicle of the Act of War series about the Great Patriotic War. In addition, she illustrates books and works on the artist’s book movement. It represents creative experiments with the form and function of a book, in which the publication is regarded as an object of artistic interpretation.
Ekaterina Smirnova is a member of the graphic arts committee of the Union of Artists of Russia and the expert committee on printmaking of the Russian Academy of Arts. She also heads the lithography studio at the Moscow State Academic Art Institute, named after V. I. Surikov. Her works are included in the collections of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, the State Hermitage Museum, as well as state and private galleries in Russia and abroad.
‘Klara Golitsyna. Paintings’
From October 11 to November 3, the Kitay-Gorod Gallery will host an exhibition of paintings by Klara Golitsyna.
Klara Golitsyna’s art includes works of various movements, from realism to postmodernism. Her artistic style is constantly evolving, from early realistic experiments of avant-garde yet figurative painting to later conceptual abstractions created according to the master’s special system. Golitsyna’s works fit perfectly with exhibitions of young artists, despite her respectable age. This year, Klara Golitsyna turns 99. She was mentored by Nikolai Vysheslavtsev, an art critic and participant in the Mir Iskusstva exhibitions (‘Art World’); her peers are Vladimir Nemukhin, Oskar Rabin, Ilya Kabakov, and other prominent members of the art community.
